The Bête Bricoleur

Technically, I don’t speak French. It should probably be Le Bricoleur Bête, but I like the sound of it all, even if it’s only typed characters reverberating through my head.

The Beast Bricklayer. The Beta Bricker (system crash, hardware bricked…) The House (Bet) of Stone and Mortar. The Lighthouse.

I can write about Cerberus—The Performer, The Gatekeeper, and The Ice Monarch—because at various points in my career, I have tried to be them. We are often drawn to that which we admire, or that which we fear we lack.

I marvel at The Performers: their fluidity, their poise under observation, the way they can “turn it on” and make the magic look effortless.

I covet the order of The Gatekeepers: that ability to set a boundary and adhere to it with ironclad self-worth and a no-B.S. manner.

And at times, I envy the strength of The Ice Monarchs: that aura of Don’t Violate My Space. Where they have walls, I live in a nebulous zone of choosing battles and erring on the side of kindness—a porous border that often exposes me to exploitation.

But it was in my clumsy, disingenuous attempts to wear their masks that I found my true niche.

I am not them. That is why I love Anansi. I am a weaver, a tinkerer, a synthesizer. I am the one who wants his cake and wants to eat it, too.

When I feel the web tighten; when the pressure to Perform mounts but I can’t find the script; when I need to Gatekeep but can’t find the headspace; when I try to be Ice Cold but my reddening face betrays my fortifications—these are the times I stop looking at them, and start looking for my Lighthouse.

I once said that if the Titanic went down, I would have been the fifth guy in the String Quartet, playing on the deck as the leviathan lurched downward into the North Atlantic. But I’d be the one playing the kazoo.

In all honesty, I wonder if I’d have such poise. But it fits my style. I am a Bricoleur. I take a piece from here, a scrap from there; I find the underlying thread and I sew. Lately, I’ve been getting better at finding the right threads.

At my best, I am an alchemist. I try to turn the lead of experience into the gold of grace and the platinum of presence.

It is difficult for my central nervous system. But it is in those cold shocks of panic—of being out scouting new territory where the map is wrong, or where there is no map at all—that I finally throw the paper away and look around. How can I perform? How can I open the gate? How can I be cool under pressure?

I don’t. I just weave. I knit. I sew. I tinker. I build. I CONNECT.

I am the Foolish Tinkerer. The Bête Bricoleur. Knitting a tapestry of time and space, trying to hold it all in place.

Read the next installment, the Third Head of Cerberus.